The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino

  I was baffled. Had he gone mad? Though he seemed to think I understood him, I could scarcely make sense of a word he said.

  “Quickly.” He drew the bowstring back a little farther. “Which one will get the sword, which one will stay here as hostage for it?”

  Oona suddenly clutched her head and staggered. Gaynor turned the bow on her.

  At Oona’s feet, the shining black body quivered. Huge muscles flexed. A tail lashed. Vast whiskers twitched. Jade eyes gleamed. A great, black nose made a single, searching snort.

  Oona was disbelieving, but Gaynor was cursing as the sabertooth climbed slowly to its feet, its glaring eyes casting around for an enemy, its huge ivory tusks glinting in the riverlight. And then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the gigantic cat, I saw another human figure.

  My doppelgänger.

  Had he brought the cat back to life? Gaynor barely disguised his own terror. Oona had the common sense to drag us behind the shelter of a nearby stalagmite so we could watch from cover.

  The other albino seemed to be talking to Gaynor. He gestured. Suddenly both he and the cat vanished. Gaynor unnocked the arrow, stuck it in his belt and ran into the darkness.

  I was completely mystified by the exchange. I tried to ask Oona if she understood any better, but she was grim, hurrying back to the interior of the city. “We must warn them of what’s happening. This will take all their resources.”

  “What does it mean? Who is that bizarre version of myself?”

  “Fairer to say that you are a version of him,” she said. “He’s called Elric of Melniboné and he carries the greatest burden of us all.”

  “And he’s from another—what—? One of these alternatives to our own reality?”

  “Some call them ‘branches’ or ‘branes.’ Or ‘the realms,’ or ‘the scales,’ but they are all versions of our universe.” She was still intent on negotiating the winding lanes of Mu Ooria, heading deeper and deeper into the city.

  “And like you, this doppelgänger of mine travels between these worlds? And he knows you?”

  “Only in his dreams,” she said.

  We were both out of breath. I had no idea where she was leading us, but she would not rest. While the immediate danger was in the forefront of my mind, I still seethed with a thousand unanswered questions. Questions so numinous I could not begin to frame them in words.

  She had led us through a high doorway, down a long corridor and up a short winding ramp until we stood in a low-ceilinged hall full of long benches of carved stone arranged around a large, glassy circular area.

  I was reminded of monks’ communal quarters. The hall was lit by the tall, watery glasses. An air of tranquillity hung about the place. The shadows were soft. The circular area at the center stirred occasionally, its shades shifting from jet black to dark grey.

  Oona led me behind the main rank of benches. As she did so, the first Off-Moo began to arrive, their long faces grave, their odd eyes questioning. I hadn’t seen the young woman give any signal. Our presence in the room must have been enough to bring the Off-Moo elders there immediately. Some had the air of people interrupted in important tasks. Clearly they believed the matter serious. How had she summoned them? Was she in telepathic communication with their group intelligence? Her face had a beautiful, open quality when she communicated with them. The gracious unhumanity of these creatures made me feel I was in the company of angels.

  With murmured acknowledgment to us, they assembled around the obsidian circle and listened gravely as Oona told them what she had seen and what we had learned.

  “Could be an army already marches against Mu Ooria.” She spoke a little hesitantly.

  Again, she was acknowledged. But the Off-Moo’s concentration had begun to focus on the reflective, glossy circle of rock around which they had gathered. I wondered what they saw there, if this were their version of a crystal ball? Some means of focusing their group consciousness?

  Then I fell back, dazzled, throwing up my hands to protect my eyes. I thought the Off-Moo would be equally affected, but they calmly held their ground. Still guarding my eyes, I found Oona. She held her own hands before her face. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “I think they have a way of bending light,” was all she could tell me. Then the worst of the white-gold glare had gone and my eyes had become accustomed to what remained. I could see the source of the radiance. At the center the circle, it was three-dimensional and thoroughly real—an ordinary block of stone suspended in space and giving off a faint, sweet-sounding vibration which brought strange memories, recollected moments of purity. When thought, deed and idea were all in harmony. I half expected Sir Parsifal, the pure knight, to appear kneeling before it. For the stone had changed before my eyes.

  I was now looking in absolute awe at what I had always assumed to be nothing more than a beautiful legend. A great, golden bowl, set with crystal and precious jewels and brimming with thick, crimson wine which poured down the sides to be absorbed by the light which darkened to deep gold and showed the whole Off-Moo conference chamber in dramatic, organic contrast, alive with dark, swirling color. My senses were barely capable of registering so much at once. I felt oddly weak and found myself, for no clear reason, longing to be united with my Raven Sword. I felt that if only I could grasp the hilt, I would be able to draw strength from the black blade. But the sword was still in my chambers and I could not bear to leave the presence of that extraordinary vessel. The bowl, this Grail, grew larger. Everywhere the tall, conical hoods of the Off-Moo waved and nodded, as if this sight was unusual, even to them. Angular shadows were softened by the rounded rock over which they fell.

  The Off-Moo’s voices began a single low note which became a chant, a word, a mantra threatening to set the entire world vibrating. Light and dark were shaken together and mingled. The bowl then re-formed, rolling into itself until it was a golden, jeweled staff, rotating slowly in the air above the obsidian disk.

  The Off-Moo chant changed and the staff expanded, grew. Just for an instant it became the shape of a small child with a round, beatific face. Then the staff returned and slowly changed shape again until it was a single arrow. The sign of Law. Then it became a sheaf of arrows, fanning out and upwards above the glassy circle. Eight golden, jeweled arrows, spinning slowly overhead. Chaos.

  The Off-Moo were concentrating on the field of glistening obsidian. Very quickly a three-dimensional picture began to form there. Riders seemed to be emerging from the rock and galloping towards us. The illusion was not unlike a very realistic cinema experience. But it was also a terrifying reality. Gaynor, in his bizarre armor, rode a great white stallion whose blind eyes stared upwards, yet whose footing was unconsciously sure. Behind him, also on pale, blind horses, still in their black and silver uniforms, came the majority of his SS followers, Klosterheim at their head. All were cloaked and armed with miscellaneous antique weaponry.

  Behind these was as bizarre a collection of monsters and grotesques as ever came shuffling and hopping out of a picture by Bosch. Perhaps, after all, the painter had been drawing from experience rather than imagination? They were long-limbed, longheaded, with huge myopic eyes. They had snuffling, exaggerated snouts, showing that they used scent more than sight. These loose-limbed travesties were much larger than the men who rode ahead of them, like toy soldiers modeled to two different scales. They were clearly savages, armed with maces and axes. Archers were in their ranks, and swordsmen. A mob rather than a disciplined army. But there were thousands of them,

  “Troogs,” said Oona.

  I could see why the Off-Moo had known they had little to fear from these denizens of the borderlands. The giants had neither the intelligence nor the ambition to attack Mu Ooria on their own accord.

  One of the Off-Moo murmured something and Oona nodded. “All the panthers have disappeared,” she told me. “They no longer control the troogs. We don’t know if the cats are dead, charmed or have simply vanished.”

  “How could they vanis
h?”

  “The workings of a powerful spell.”

  “Spell?” I was thoroughly skeptical. “Spell, Fräulein? Are we so desperate we rely on sorcery?”

  She showed some impatience with me. “Call it what you like, Count von Bek, but that is the best description. They sense a Summoning. A being far more powerful than the kind which usually walks these caverns. Perhaps a Lord of the Higher Planes. Which means that Gaynor has somehow brought the Lords of the Balance out of their own realm and has given his allegiance. If they are able to bring all their power with them, they will be almost impossible to defeat. But some need the medium of a human creature like Gaynor and his army.”

  “Those troogs are huge.”

  “Only here,” she said. “In certain configurations of the branches, they are tiny. They’re just the creatures who inhabit the borderland between Mu Ooria and the Grey Fees. They are not of the Higher Planes but exactly what you know them to be, creatures of the lower depths. They’re Gaynor’s cannon fodder. If Gaynor’s sorcery is successful against us, they will do the routine slaughtering.”

  “You seem to have experienced such an invasion before,” I said.

  “Oh, more than once,” she said. “This struggle is constant, believe me. You cannot imagine what is beginning to happen in your own world.”

  Increasingly, I was feeling the need to have the Raven Sword at my side. While Oona continued to confer with the Off-Moo, I told them I would return soon.

  I ran through serpentine streets, through the shifting light, finding my way as much by the muted colors as by the shape of the buildings, until I reached my quarters. I went to where I had left the sword. To my enormous relief it was still in the alcove near my bed. I unwrapped it, just to make sure it was my own beloved blade, and the dark, vibrating steel murmured to me in recognition.

  Settling Ravenbrand in its makeshift scabbard, I left the room with it over my shoulder and once again made my way through the winding streets, recognizing how a shaft of silvery light fell here, how the shadows moved there, how the colors changed in a particular stretch of wall, what was contained in those weird gardens.

  I crossed the central plaza again and was approaching the streets on the other side when I heard a mocking sound from behind me. Turning, I stared into the triumphant eyes of my cousin Gaynor. He was aiming an arrow directly at me.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that he would have the audacity to follow us all the way into the heart of Mu Ooria. I was still not used to seeing two versions of the same person—one leading a hideous army against a great city and the other already in the city.

  Gaynor had a happy cruelty about him. “Surprised, I see, cousin. I have an alter ego taking care of one front, while I’m free to attack on another. Every general’s greatest desire, eh?” He was salivating and his eyes kept moving towards the sword. He was fascinated—almost enraptured—by it.

  Without thinking, I shifted my grip on the hilt and held it with the point down, against the counterweight of the pommel, so that it could come up rapidly, almost without any effort on my part, and send Gaynor’s bow flying from his grasp. I only had to bring him in a little closer.

  But he was wary. He stayed some distance off, the arrow still nocked against the string. He was clearly new to the art of archery but seemed to have mastered it well enough.

  There was nothing else for it. I would have to close with him.

  I began to move, very gradually, talking as I attempted to shorten the distance between us. But Gaynor was grinning and shaking his head from side to side. “Why on Earth would you think I had any reason to keep you alive now, cousin. You have what I need. All I have to do is kill you and take it from you.”

  “You could have shot me in the back to do that,” I said, just as he loosed an arrow which caught me high in my left arm. I was surprised that I felt no pain, then I realized my sturdy Norfolk jacket’s tweed had taken the arrow. I was untouched. Before he could fit another shaft to his bowstring, I took a few swift steps towards him and held the sword’s needle-sharp point to his throat.

  “Drop your weapon, cousin,” I demanded.

  I felt a sharp pain in my side, looked down and saw the blade of a Nazi dagger pressed against my rib cage. Looking up I stared into the lifeless eyes of the gaunt Klosterheim.

  “So, you also have a twin.” I shuddered.

  “We are all the same,” murmured Klosterheim. “All of us. Millions of us.”

  He seemed feverish, abstracted. Even nervous.

  We were now in a stalemate, with my blade at Gaynor’s throat and Klosterheim’s at my ribs.

  “Lower your sword, sir,” he said. “And place it on the ground before you.”

  I laughed in his face. “I’m sworn to die before I give up Ravenbrand.”

  Gaynor was impatient. “Your father, too, was sworn to die to protect your family’s inheritance. And die he did, sir. Ulric. Dear cousin. Give me the Black Sword and I guarantee that you will be allowed to live on at Bek, with all your villagers, your castle and everything back the way you’re used to. No one will bother you. Believe me, cousin, there are those of us, quite as idealistic as you, who are prepared to get their hands dirty in order to plant the seeds of paradise. If you choose to keep clean hands, that is your decision. But I do not make that choice. I’m ready to accept the necessity, to establish order throughout the multiverse. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that you’re mad,” I said.

  He laughed aloud at this. “Mad? We’re all that, cousin. The multiverse is mad. But we shall make it sane again. We shall make it whatever we wish it to be. Can’t you feel yourself changing? It is the only way you’ll survive. It’s how I’ve survived. But no human brain can accept so much intellectual and sensory overload without radically adapting. Do you really believe you’re the same person who so recently fled a concentration camp?”

  He spoke the truth. I could never be the same man. Yet he was still trying to confuse me.

  “Herr Klosterheim will have to kill me,” I said, “because I am not going to volunteer you my services or my sword.”

  We had reached a rough-and-ready stalemate. I looked past Gaynor. Over his shoulder a familiar figure raced towards me across the smooth floor of the plaza. It wore ornate black armor, a complicated helm. Its red eyes blazed as its pale hands reached out. It ran straight through the unaware Gaynor. A mirror-ghost. It radiated a terrible, desperate urgency. My instinct was to pull back, but my intellect told me to hold my ground.

  The figure charged at enormous speed. It must surely knock me down. But he did not stop. Neither did he run through me. Instead he ran directly into me. Armored body, helmed head, everything passed into my sensibly dressed twentieth-century person and was absorbed! A moment earlier I had been one individual. Now I was two.

  I was two men in a single body. I did not for a second question this fact. How could I?

  Suddenly I had two sets of memories. Two identities, each very distinct. Two futures. Two sets of emotions. But I also shared much with my doppelgänger. An overweening hatred for Gaynor, his brutal pack and all that it represented both here and in my own world. My double’s resolve combined to strengthen my own, to complement my own anger. I knew at once that this was his intention. He had deliberately set out to achieve a combination of our power. And, because he was in so many ways myself, I could only trust him. He could not lie to me. Only to himself.

  Now the Black Sword began to pulse and murmur, the red runes running like veins up and down her throbbing length. I felt her writhe in my hand. She rose under her own volition, rose in my fist until I held her shoulder-high. I cried out some savage battle shout as the sword set my body thrilling with power, with a thousand conflicting notions and feelings, with a cruel, unfamiliar death lust. I could taste the sweet blood and bitter souls my sword would soon devour. I licked my long lips. I was coming alive!

  The beast will return to the fold, the sparrow to the field. Swords to marry, souls to heal
.

  I was speaking. A mantra. The end of some longer chant? A spell. In a language which one half of me did not understand at all, but the other half knew perfectly. It was not the language either of us habitually spoke. I could understand my thoughts in both languages and they were almost the same, save that the older tongue was full of throat-twisting glottal stops, clicks and hisses.

  This other speech was far more liquid, immeasurably more ancient. Not human at all. Something that had to be learned, sound by sound, meaning by meaning. Something that had taken me many tortured years to come by.

  Two cups for justice. Two swords for harmony. Twin souls for victory. Lords and ladies walk on moonshine. Twins command the serpentine. Flows the blood and flows the wine. Flows the river to the sign. Twins in harlequin combine.

  My alter ego was concentrating on the mantra. It had enabled him to perform this astonishing magic. Of course, I understood everything at once, for we were now the same creature. And being two identities in a single body, I saw how it was possible to be many people. To be sane and conscious of many other identities all at the same time. So many decisions, choices, obstacles. To understand that, at every moment, a million other selves were determining a million subtly or radically different paths. To be able to see the multiverse in whole, to have no worlds hidden, no possibilities denied! A glorious gift. All you had to do was find the roads. Now I understood the lure of such a life and why Oona and her mother and her mother’s mother had inevitably chosen it.

  The immediacy of the moment was in no way lessened by this experience of infinity. I was able to defend myself, indeed to carry the attack if I so desired, for I had combined Elric’s training with my own. I knew how to act in battle and concentrate on a spell at the same time, for I was of the pure, old blood of Melniboné and we nurtured such gifts in ourselves. Our ancient folk had forged many compacts with the elementals of the multiverse. With the powers of Earth, air, water and fire. And many of those compacts remained unbroken. I could call on all the powers of nature, though not all nature’s power. To sense one’s control of the wind, fire, the very form of the Earth and flow of the water, to have conversed with the great beast-gods, those archetypes from whom all other animals came and who could command legions should they desire: all this was indescribably marvelous. Few of these allies had more than a healthy beast’s need for a sufficiency of things and so had few ambitions in the affairs of men or gods, though the Lords of the Higher Worlds respected them. Only when called would the elementals agree, occasionally, to concern themselves in mortal conflicts. And now I had all these powers, understood the price to be paid for exercising them and the need for a psychic and physical sustenance far greater than anything I had required in the world of Bek. The reality was more intense, the stakes far higher than anything I had ever guessed possible.